Eastern games with a free-to-play model continue to be imported to the
West with varying degrees of success. Most Eastern MMOGs have a hard
time finding an audience with Western players due the play style
differences between the two regions. Perfect World seeks to change that
by launching a game with the Western player firmly in mind:
style="font-style: italic;">Forsaken World.
This fantasy MMOG, which began its open beta in early March, strives
mightily to bridge the gap between East and West.

Stylistically,
style="font-style: italic;">Forsaken World
is a fantasy MMOG that combines elements of Eastern and Western games.
The lore for
style="font-style: italic;">Forsaken World
is your typical clash-of-the-gods scenario with the player races
loosely banded together to face the increasing threat of Dysil, an evil
entity now housed in the body of a black dragon, and his forces.

Cautions

There are no ratings for the game, but there is mild violence depicted
within the game along the same scale as
style="font-style: italic;">World of Warcraft.

Gameplay - 80 / 100

The gameplay for
style="font-style: italic;">Forsaken World
will feel familiar to Western players and is similar to other
successful MMOGs currently on the market, most notably
style="font-style: italic;">World of Warcraft.
Players create their character by choosing a race and a class.
style="font-style: italic;">FW
adds a couple of new races to the standard fantasy mix, Kindred (a
vampire-like race created when a demi-goddess
“embraced” her mortal true love) and Stonemen (a
race of males that are born out of the stones of the earth), and race
selection does have an impact upon what class you can play. Dwarves can
only be Marksmen (ranged DPS) whilst Humans and Kindred can be
Assassins.

Once you have chosen your race and class, you start out in your
race’s starting area. From there, you’ll follow a
linear quest path that eventually takes you to Freedom Harbor, the
questing hub of the game. From Freedom Harbor, you can quest in the
surrounding countryside or travel to other zones. The different zones
are level locked, which means that you’ll have to be a
specific level (20, 30, 40, 50, etc) to travel there.

Just like other MMOGs, there are crafting professions (called Jobs)
such as Alchemy or Cook that a player can learn. Some Jobs are
automatically learned by reaching a certain level, whilst the others
are learned by spending Job points. In addition, each class has their
own talent trees (starting at level 20) by which they can further
specialize their class. Other game amenities include a bank and an
auction house.

While every person is on the same side (the good side), there are three
factions in the game that a player can increase their reputation with
for rewards, normally in the guise of better gear. Just like in
style="font-style: italic;">World of Warcraft,
gear can increase stats and abilities.

Quests are your typical MMOG quests: kill X of something, gather X of
something, and run messages back and forth between NPCs. There is a
main quest storyline in the game (denoted as yellow) and offshoot
quests (green) as well as daily quests. The dungeons in
style="font-style: italic;">FW
require a party to enter and the usual minimum is three players, so if
you play solo, you’ll miss some of the content.

A feature that I like in the game is that when you’re looking
at a quest entry, you can click on the name of an NPC or monster and
you will automatically run to their location. While some might think
that this takes the fun out of exploring, I have almost no patience and
I don’t want to spend an hour looking for a specific named
monster or an NPC contact in the city.

Combat is straightforward with the player having an auto-attack and
special abilities. As you gain levels, you gain new abilities and
increase the effectiveness of certain abilities. However, you
regenerate health and mana (used for all your abilities) very slowly,
so you’ll be drinking liquids and eating food to replenish
your vitality after fighting.

Two other things stand out about monsters and combat. First, hitting
TAB does not automatically select the closest enemy to you in the
direction you are facing. It selects the closest one
style="font-weight: bold;">period,
which means that it can select one behind you. If you’re not
paying attention, you can start a fight with one creature and
accidentally attack an enemy behind you. With the incredibly fast
respawn rate of creatures, this can become quite a problem.

Another weird trait is that most of the monsters do not attack on
sight. If they can be aggroed, they will have a symbol of crossed
swords over their heads. It took me awhile to get used to this, and it
still feels weird to walk through a pack of vampires equal to my level
and they don’t even bat an eye (no pun intended) at my
presence. You will definitely have to keep an eye out for those
creatures that will aggro on you as that the respawn rate in
style="font-style: italic;">FW
is insanely fast, so you can find yourself constantly being attacked by
a respawning foe if you stay in the wrong place.

Overall, the game mechanics will feel familiar to Western players, but
there are some differences that show its Eastern origins.

First, there is a huge emphasis on pets in the game. Starting out, a
player can have two pets and this number can be expanded later on.
Before you can use a pet, you have to incubate it for at least 10
minutes. The longer you leave it in incubation, the stronger it will be
when you bring it out. Incubation only occurs while you’re
logged into the game. Once you have your trusty pet by your side, it
will fight and defend you. You can even have your pet learn skills to
enhance its ability. I had to fight off the urge to yell out,
“I summon you, Pikachu!” as I summoned my pet ram
for the first time.

There is also a great deal of running around to do the quests. Some
quests required me to run back and forth between a few NPCs a dozen
times, which I found extremely tedious. There are daily events and
quests that open up, but those are timed for specific days and specific
times. If you prefer to play late at night (like me), you’re
out of luck for events like the Nightmare Carnival.

Another interesting bit is that the zodiac is used in the game. Your
character can pray during the day with an hour between each prayer. The
first four times you pray, you are rewarded with experience, a buff,
and items. After the fourth time, you gain only a buff. If your
character’s sign (chosen at character creation) is currently
active when you pray, you have a greater chance of receiving items.

I must make note of one big negative that I hope will be addressed in
the future and that is the Encylopedia in the game. While some lore and
quest entries are put into the book for you to read over later, the
remainder of the entries is in Chinese. There’s a nice table
of contents and a search function, but everything you click on goes to
a page filled with Chinese script. I can’t read Chinese and
neither can most of the gamers in the West. I found this surprising as
that the quest text and other written parts were clear and in proper
English.

Finally, while the game plays like most other Western MMOGs, there is
one area that it does differ remarkably: money. There are two types of
currency in the game, which I will go into detail in the Value section.

The gameplay is extremely solid overall, even with the gripes
I’ve listed above. There are some issues that need to be
addressed, but the game is very polished from a design standpoint and
offers players all the bells and whistles that they’ve come
to expect in today’s MMOGs.

Graphics - 90 / 100

The graphics in
style="font-style: italic;">Forsaken World
are above the norm for a free-to-play game and are on par with your
typical subscription MMOG. The colors are lush and vibrant and the
lands and creatures very detailed. The look of the game is similar to
style="font-style: italic;">World of Warcraft
and is Western in nature, but the Eastern influence of the game does
pop out from time to time. The heroes are all anime-tall with the Elves
and Kindred almost androgynous in their looks. The dwarf female looks
nothing like a dwarf, but rather an anime style gothic lolita. Zones
have different looks from one another: Freedom Harbor boasts a
Renaissance style theme to the people and architecture while the Sea of
Oblivion has an Egyptian motif due to its desert location. My one
quibble is that some of the attack animations for some of the creatures
(most notably the vampires) need to be improved a bit as that
they’re a bit too static.

Sound - 65 / 100

Sound in Forsaken
World is standard for MMOGs.
You’ll find the sounds of combat, the soothing lapping of
water, and background music, but it does not really draw you into the
world of Eyrda. The sound isn’t terrible, but it’s
more of a background filter that you listen to while questing. Like
most MMOGs, you’ll probably be listening to your own
soundtrack after a while.

Multiplayer - 77 / 100

Multiplayer is a mixed bag in
style="font-style: italic;">Forsaken World.
It’s easy to form a party or to join a guild. In fact,
it’s beneficial to join a guild as those larger guilds can
get access to special guild quests and NPCs. If you’re on a
PvP server, you can PvP anywhere in the world outside of safe zones
(cities), but if you’re on a PvE server, you can only face
other players in duels. Perfect World has mentioned bringing arenas to
the game, but that has not happened yet.

To go into dungeons, players need to group with other players. The
usual minimum requirement is three players. While this forced grouping
makes players interact with other players, it does deny this experience
to players who like to play solo. While completing some quests, there
was some talk of mercenaries by the NPC that I was doing the quest for.
However, I have yet to come across any more information about
mercenaries that you can hire to fill out a group. Hopefully that is
something that Perfect World will implement down the road.

Value - 77 / 100

Forsaken
World has some good value,
and some not-so-good. First, let’s deal with the good.

The game is free-to-play with a cash shop. To be honest, you can play
for as long as you want without spending a dime. The game is polished
and well done. You can craft items to replenish your health and mana
rather than buying items from the cash shop. You’ll just have
to spend more time in-game gathering resources to craft said items. The
cash shop items are mostly cosmetic (clothes) and potions, and are
reasonably priced. The game is fun to play and it’s free.
What more can I say?

On the negative side, there are two items. The first is that you must
use an item to speak on the global chat channel. Otherwise,
you’re only speaking in “nearby” mode,
which means that only somebody standing close to you will hear you.
(There is guild and party chat.) You can get the global chat item
(World Flute) for the cost of 4 cents each from the cash shop. It does
not sound like much, but it can add up really quick. Text messaging
ring a bell? On the plus side, it totally negates spam from gold
sellers!

The second negative is the fact that there are two forms of currency in
the game. There are soul coins that you get from killing enemy
creatures, which you can spend at NPC vendors. The other coinage is
normal gold coins. You have to use normal coinage (non-soul coinage)
for the auction house and if you want to buy something from another
player. You cannot trade soul coinage. The only way to get normal
coinage is to exchange your cash shop credits or to sell stuff to other
players. As a player, you can create your own vendor shop which other
players can click on and buy items that you listed for the prices you
decided on.

Lasting Appeal - 77 / 100

Despite some of the confusing aspects, such as the two currency system,Forsaken
World is a game that I can
see myself playing in the future. The cash shop is reasonable, the
gaming experience is on a par with other MMOGs, and while some quests
feel grindy, most of them are not that way. There are some problems
that need to be fixed, but overall, I think that
style="font-style: italic;">FW
will carve itself a comfortable niche in the free-to-play market. Its
mix of Asian influence with Western-style gameplay makes it stand out a
bit from other free-to-play games. A considerable amount of effort has
been put into the game getting it in shape for Western players (ie:
translations), so it’s a fair bet that those defects
mentioned will be corrected in the future.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

Smooth, polished gameplay

Vibrant graphics

Reasonable cash shop

Cons:

Auto-targeting erratic

Forced grouping for dungeons

Confusing money system

Nickel and diming for global
chat

Timed events can leave some
players out in the cold

Conclusion

Unlike other free-to-play games, I actually enjoyed playing
style="font-style: italic;">Forsaken World.
I think of it as an Eastern
style="font-style: italic;">World of Warcraft
with a cash shop. The game’s focus on Western style gameplay
really sets it apart from other Eastern imports. All the bells and
whistles of current MMOGs are found here: talent trees, crafting,
exploration, level-based gear, mounts, banks, and auction houses. The
Eastern influences ranging from the visual look of the characters to
the mechanics of player shops and pets give
style="font-style: italic;">Forsaken World
a unique feel. All in all, it’s a great merging of the better
aspects of the East and the West into an enjoyable game.

Overall 80/100 - Good

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Forsaken World
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